


Like a Fish on a Bicycle

by RainofLittleFishes



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Home Decor Porn, Humor, Kink Meme, Unintentional Redemption, quadrant shenanigans, thoughts of non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 04:20:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2374292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainofLittleFishes/pseuds/RainofLittleFishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eridan’s finally finished his Swanky Swinging Seadwweller Cavern Hideaway as part of his Crusade to Get Some, and is now hunting for victims, um, “co-participants”, voluntary or otherwise. </p><p>He works his way through a spectrum of inappropriate choices in a quest to find someone, anyone, who will respect his furniture and join him at the bucket. Both seem increasingly, (hilariously), futile. </p><p>Shockingly, no one dies, and things might actually be looking up by the time this wannabe Casanova cools his fishy jets... and he might yet learn to be a bit less of a terrible person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Fish on a Bicycle

**Author's Note:**

> Something you should know: This was prompted on Homesmut, Meme XX, page 69. The original prompt was “Eridan kidnaps a troll or trolls and takes them to his rape cave” and it was proposed by failure_artist that it be modified to “Eridan is more interested in his swank rape cave than his victim.”. There is no rape in this fic, but there is a lot of discomfort as Eridan fails to respect other people as in any way having the inherent rights he expects as his due, and has thoughts he chooses not to act upon about forcing himself on someone.

**Eridan: Perpetuate Classy Values**

You are a classy fucking seadwweller with impeccable taste and you always get what you want. Always.

Right now, what you want is the delivery drones to hurry up and get here. They are late, and that is unforgivable. Worse, they are making _you_ wait. You are going to send in a strongly worded complaint and get them dismantled. Or possibly shoot them yourself. Then again, if you shoot them, you’ll have to deal with seeing their decaying corpses polluting this inlet every time you take a delivery from on land. Your life is so difficult.

The drones finally arrive and you only wing them, after they drop off the goods of course. You are magnanimous. Also, you are in a hurry to get your order back to your swinging bachelor pad and see it properly. They better have gotten your color correct, or heads will _roll_.

You tow the crates out to your modest little 28 foot sloop and hurry back to the site of your new pad, unpack, arrange a few things, and just take in the ambiance. _Perfect_. Just like you.

The room, or rather, suite of rooms, and several levels, is set inside a coral reef, inside and underneath a larger cave with the roof fallen through. It creates an inverted bowl with positively _dramatic_ lighting. You have had to order another two stacks of designer scarves just to coordinate properly for all phases of the moonlight, but it was _worth_ it.

Inside your main rooms, the concupiscent suite, the floors are all highly polished mountainous bloodwood, shimmering with the greens and blues and teals of their victims, carefully sorted into a parquet flooring pattern featuring an enormous compass rose and stylized waves, all inlaid with your sign of course. The high vaulted ceiling is done in authentic vintage starship hulls, pocked with charming constellations of battle scars.

The floor-to-ceiling violet velvet curtains flank the huge underwater windows. You might not like to get wet with _seawater_ (ugh, it does _terrible_ things to your hair) but you are still a _seadwweller_ and the windows frame quaint little views of the reef and its quaint little inhabitants, schools of fish in all colors, anemones, rays, a few visiting turtles, the 50 foot long squid lusus that putters about.

The cave grotto came with the squid lusus, charge drafted last sweep, and once the two of you came to an _understanding_ , you turn a blind eye to her occasional rearrangement of the rock garden best viewed from the lushly appointed alcove off the main suite, with its plasglass floor and firm lounging pillows. And you don’t bother to shoot her when she unties and reties your sloop or the rowboat. It’s insufferable to be critiqued in your own pad, but she doesn’t actually fondle the goods when she rearranges the dock, so you can afford to be magnanimous. She has a few uses, and SeahorseDad seems glad enough to have someone else to watch all the entrances.

The concupiscent level’s bathing room floor and tub are precisely textured dark volcanic rock, the floor looted by commission from a decaying temple in a jungle of some sort, and the tub carved to match, polished on the sides to avoid accidental abrasions. The tub is big enough for three to comfortably lounge, something that, alas, would be far too sedate a description of your intentions. The faucets are all seahorses and the tub edge is padded in seacalf leather because you have _plans_ for that tub. There’s a stark white icebear pelt charmingly angled _just so_ across the dark expanse of the floor. One of your kills, of course. The skull’s eyeholes have been tastefully set with faceted amethysts so that its sparkle is inescapable. You are just that snazzy.

There’s a self-heating bench on the side of the room stocked with towels and upholstered in soft scaly sea serpent leather. The modest sink mirror is framed in a vintage frame you ordered online, winning out over the other bidders, all landlubbers, with your caste code. It came with some old land quad’s twee _momento mori_ portrait, which you chucked and replaced with a top-of-the-line Crystaline mirror, guaranteed to show you in the most flattering of lights, with switches on the side for magnification and alternative lighting. Of course, your plans for the tub extended to extending another mirror across the far wall and across the ceiling. You don’t want to miss out on the best angle just because you failed to prepare. You set your shoulders back and flare your fins in at the mirror. Yes. Like that. Mmmm. You are still quite presentable.

The “respite” block is a hedonistic heaven, just as you intended, three couches each worth a lowblood and the custom-made individual pillows each worth a lowblood’s annual allowance. They are all at least touched with your color, but only an amateur would do them all up all alike. Your color is beautiful because it is your color, but you are beautiful because one, you are fucking perfect, and two, you are rare. Antici… _pation_. Leave them panting.

The torchieres are all handblown glass and wrought iron, veiled in troll-eating spidersilk shades, the especially expensive wild-gathered type, with gilded seahorse sconces set on the walls between the windows. There’s a huge viewing screen set into the floor and at the touch of a claw it moves up into place, covering two windows and the space between. You keep it lowered into the floor so it doesn’t distract. It’s cutting edge contemporary and this room has more of an opulently casual vintage vibe. The gaming systems and grubs are all filed away in low credenzas with inlaid tops, the knotwork of the inlays corresponding to the contents. It’s only logical to be organized about it.

One corner of the room is a carefully arranged pile of cushions on a precisely casual layout of vintage rugs, fenced into its own space by a fainting couch and a gorgeous painted wooden screen, classically risqué in the troll Rubens style, a seductive tumble of fat happy seadwwelling sirens. You’ve never actually seen a troll that looks like a Rubens siren, but you can imagine how fierce they’d have to be to maintain such a level of muscle and the entirely adipose topmost layer of blubber, and you can imagine that Feferi might someday achieve it.

Make a note, feed that girl more, she’s going to need all the help she can get to sway the masses when you help her off the Empress. You’ve researched past challenges and no one stands a chance at a fair fight. You’re just going to have to rig it. You take a moment to envision an adult Feferi and the sleek space-void-dark silhouette of the reigning empress, a clash of titans. Oh. You have to take a moment to fan yourself.

The walls of the suite are covered in graduated shades of ocean colored mulberry paper, subtly pinstriped in silver and hung with endangered nodding-reed scrolls. You imagine a pitiable red lover so overcome with the poetry ( _your poetry_ ) that they faint in your loving arms, a pitch conquest so infuriated by your panache that they tear the scrolls in twain as the two of you brawl artfully across the room. You fan yourself again.

You have a state-of-the-art sound system to set the mood and the momentous main concupiscent couch is so large it had to be hauled in in sections. You had been careful to be sure all the windows were covered before you crawled underneath to bolt them together. Keeping up appearances is key.

One end of the couch is a classy fucking heart and the other a fucking classy spade, connected in between by a sinuous curve of back-to-back couches with one spine and two sides of seating, all tastefully finished in pearl gray skywhale leather, soft as a freshly slaughtered grub, un-fucking-stainable, and expensive as anything.

Or it would be expensive, but you’re an orphaner, the only current orphaner, and while you must spend nine to ten perigees of the sweep sating Gl'bgolyb’s hunger, the position is not without its perks. You found a landdweller with a dinky lusus and a talent for tanning and taxidermy, and they convert your prizes without complaint for a very reasonable allowance. It’s good to be you.

Though an arched hallway like the upside-down keel of a wood ship, stained glass set between the ribs and illuminated by lights shining through, you ascend the steps to the kitchen block level. The appliances are all gleaming violet enamel and the wide-legged steel-topped table is just big enough to seat two, but sturdy enough to _hold_ two, even during the vigorous exercise that would go into working up an appetite.

You had commissioned a brown somewhere out on the plains to raid an old pre-revolt temple and installed, or rather, instructed the drones to install, the resulting double arm span of mosaic as your sink backsplash. It’s a scene of some old timey sacrifice and there’s a green getting its horns snapped off and two yellows getting pailed by two enormous blue initiates on a stone alter already painted in rust. Crude, but somehow primal. Very mood-setting.

You had been relieved when the drones installed it properly squared up, without adding any contemporary cracks or chips, which would have left you to beat them to death with a trowel and attempt to finish the job yourself. Grout. Ugh. You don’t want to imagine what it would have done to your skin care regimen.

The brown had tossed in a life-size marble carving of two flush lovers getting it on, blood indistinguishable, the longer horned one’s head tipped back trustingly while the medium horned one works at their throat and climbs them to take their bulge or slip their own in.

You had paid half again what you promised the brown and not offed her as a tip.

Good contractors are hard to find, especially ones with a decent understanding of your classy tastes. You had put an alcove in the kitchen just to host the statue, backed with a sheet of pebbled glass and floored with a lava basin carved like a scallop shell. Water runs down the glass and drains into the sparkling polished quartz gravel, cycling back up to begin again.

There are a few plants set in the basin, something you ordered that was labeled “suitable for food-preparation blocks”. You don’t know what they are but the catalog claimed they weren’t in the least poisonous and they smell surprisingly nice. Over the past perigees, as you finished your Grotto of Getting-It-On, the plants have spread and one has started up the standing statue’s leg, giving the whole thing a more authentically antiquated feel.

The soft trickling is very soothing and you had lights gels installed so that you can change the participants’ colors with the touch of a claw. It’s important to have a focal point.

You really must be sure that no one else offs the brown, or catches on to how useful she is. There’s a few sweeps yet to ascension, but it’s never too early to be thinking ahead.

The cabinets are all gleaming bloodwood, a much paler variety, this time sheened in green and yellow. You’ve made sure that they are well stocked with a variety of non-perishable goods, including the highest quality of teas, spices, and chocolate. You don’t actually care about tea and you’re not actually a particularly good cook, serviceable mostly, but it never hurts to be prepared. If nothing else, your conquests will be suitably impressed if they riffle through your cabinets, which you can’t actively approve of, it’s fucking rude, but you know that they will be unable to avoid doing it, because clearly the mystery of your mystique shall simply overcome them.

The centers of each cabinet are modest mirrors, outlined with a thin stripe of gold. You take a moment to check your hair.

The ceiling in the kitchen is a continuation of the romantic vintage starship hull, accented here with a plasteel view window still stained in blueblood.

The walls of the kitchen block are the warm gray of weathered wood, sanded down to a satin finish and left unsealed. If you were to be brutally honest with yourself, a practice you abhor, you might note that the warm gray is much more relaxing than most of the “respite” block, but the respite block is not _meant_ for relaxing.

The window in the kitchen block looks out onto the enclosed lagoon and is sealed, like all the windows are, in a thin pricy coating that automatically dims the incoming light to optimal reading levels. Of course you’re worth it. You always are.

The drones had positively outdone themselves, and you had rewarded their efforts by personally offing each one. The squid lusus cleaned up the corpses. It’s a nice arrangement. You initially installed a bit of fear in her with Ahab’s Crosshairs and she keeps the riffraff out and takes care of the garbage. SeahorseDad approves of your efficiency.

*

**Eridan: Initiate The Plan**

At first you think that you’re exceptionally lucky. You just finished your classy pad and are trawling for your first victim, and you find the indigo wandering a beach in a rather altered state of mind. It’s like he was made for you to take, and so you do.

Hours later, he’s still high and he’s _not_ appreciating all the work you put into this.

He didn’t resist when you abducted him but he’s not participating when you try to move things along. He’s not respecting your décor and he’s not respecting you. At all.

He’s curled up in an alcove piled with pillows, getting facepaint on the beadwork and tassels, utterly ignorant of their provenance, the historical symbolic importance of the patterns, the rarity of watersilk. He’s hugging a piedseal leather bolster like a grub on its lusus and you are so frustrated! You had specifically ordered that bolster with the thought that its shape and firmness would cant a red lover’s hips _just so_ to be taken from behind, or arch their back _just so_ to display for you. The facepaint will probably wipe off, but that pillow is _already irreparably ruined_ for you. _It will_ _always smell like clown_.

He’s tried to hug you a few times, but you have a moirail. You just want sex, and maybe enduring hatred. You could still eat him you suppose. You take another look at him. There’s not much meat on him, and that after you’ve fed him for three nights. And who knows where he’s been? And if you off him here, you’ll have to clean up.

You return him to the beach and he wanders off with the ruined bolster like nothing happened. Sigh. Your life is so difficult.

*

Terminally Capricious [TC] has messaged you

TC: KaR, mY bEsT bRo, YoU’lL nEvEr GuEsS tHe MiRaClEs ThAt HaVe AlL uP aNd GoT tHeIr HaPpEnInG oN.

CG: NO. I’M NOT PLAYING THIS GAME. I’M NOT GUESSING PIE, OR THAT YOU *DISCOVERED* THAT YOUR TOES WIGGLE, OR THAT YOU FOUND ANOTHER HORN. I. AM. NOT. INTERESTED.

TC: i HaVe HaD a ViSiTaTiOn. An OuT oF bEaCh ExPerIeNcE.

CG: YOU MEAN VOICES? IGNORE THEM. YOUR MESSIAHS ARE ALL THE SOUND OF YOUR DIGESTION SACK TRYING TO MAKE ACQUAINTANCE WITH YOUR SPINAL COLUMN. EAT A FRIGGING HAMBURGLAR. AND GET YOURSELF A MOIRAIL INSTEAD OF PLACEHOLDING THE QUADRANT BY BOTHERING ME AT ODD HOURS. I AM NOT YOUR PROFESSIONAL PALE CONCILIATORY COUNSELOR-FOR-HIRE. FOR ONE THING, IF I WAS A PROFESSIONAL, I’D HAVE THE SELF-RESPECT NOT TO DO THIS FOR FREE.

TC: NaH, bRo, ImMa AlL gOoD. tHe MoSt GrOoVy oF sEaDwElLiNg SwInGcAtS aLl uP aN tOoK mE aWaY oN hIs CaTaMaRaN oF LoVvE aNd FeD Me HoOfBeAsTs StEaKs. We HaD uS a BiTcHtItS sLeEpOvVeR. yOu ShOuDa BeEn tHeRe BrO, hE hAs ThE sOfTeSt PiLeS, wOuLdA cAlmEd YoUr ShOuTpOlEs.

CG: WAIT, GAMZEE, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? STAY AWAY FROM SEADWELLERS, THEY’RE NOTHING BUT TROUBLE. AND DON’T ACCEPT FOOD FROM STRANGERS. WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE TRYING TO DO TO YOU?! AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN PILES, GAMZEE, DID HE DO SOMETHING TO YOU? GAMZEE?!

TC: ImMa GoNnA gEt My ReSt On In ThIs HeRe BiTcHtItS pIlE oF hOrNs AnD tHiS nIfTy NeW cYlInDeR oF mIrAcLes. YoU sHoUlD gEt YoUrSeLf OnE bRo S’pErFeCt FoR wHeN yOu DoN’t GoT nO oNe ElSe AbOuT tO gEt YoUr HuGgInG oN. pEaCe BrO.

CG: GAMZEE?

Terminally Capricious [TC] has signed off.

CG: ARGH!

*

**Eridan: Quitting Is For Losers, Try Again**

You think for a few hours that you’ve gotten lucky this time. Just a few minutes after you returned the indigo, you find a big strong blue marching across the beach where you first picked him up. Mmm, muscles. You have plenty of ideas of how he can put those to good use.

You sail on over and flirt a bit, cajole him into looking at your boat engine. “I think somethin’s wwrong, it’s making a funny sound, good sir, oh my, I can’t imagine wwhat it is…” Suckerfish.

Two nights later you drop him off on the same beach. Your swinging seadwweller cavern hideaway is better than ever, generators working at 112%, structural integrity analyzed and reinforced in three places, filtration updated so the water’s so pristine it fucking sparkles, and you now have a spiffy set of psionic inhibiting shackles for the lowblood psionic you don’t have. Your would-be conquest does not consume the flesh of noble beasts. Well, fuck if you’re feeding him fish then. You’re out of crackers, fruit, and projects. He popped two bolsters, an antique freehand lathed bloodwood chair, and sweat on six pillows, three irreplaceable. The blue is as (metaphorically) dry and boring as a desert and you still haven’t pailed anyone. Argh.

SeahorseDad tells you that sometimes that’s just the way the copepod crumbles.

*

**Eridan, You’re Going To Regret This**

You’re sailing back to the shore the next night to pick up some drone-delivered groceries when you see her. Your first thought is, she’s fricking perfect, well-formed, fighting trim, with a well-articulated fake arm that shows she’s a survivor. She’s got one booted foot on a rock and both hands on her hips and she’s wearing a fabulous cape. It must be pitch-black spade serendipity.

You slide up to the beach bluff with a fancy bit of steering and engage in a bit of slick intelligence gathering, pitch flirt until she accepts your challenge. She jumps down onto the deck and you’d be impressed by the leap if you weren’t trying to steer your sloop away from the rocks while she tries to strangle you. The two of you wrestle on the deck until you manage to get in a good hit and knock her down just enough to tie her up. You’ve already got lines of fire burning down your arms and face and throat where she nailed you, and you’re not sure how rugged you’ll look when it heals, but it probably won’t be very visible. You think this is perfect, she’s perfect, perfectly hate-able.

You’re desperate at this point, your bits just might dry up and fall off and out if you don’t get some, but you’re not stupid. You don’t want her to know where your pad is, not if this just turns out to be a one night pitch stand. You stow her below deck once you hit open water.

A few hours later, the two of you are definitely getting it on, you’ve brawled your way through the concupiscent room, knocking over three lamps and an etagere full of expensive curios. The ottomans and pillows are scattered. You’ve dueled each other with the curtain rods and, sorry SeahorseDad, the magnificent seahorse finials will _never be the same_. There’s a starburst of noble violet blood on the floor, there’s cerulean under your nails, and you are _so, **finally** , going to get some_.

You’ve launched yourself off of the seat and back of that absolutely amazing Post-Diluvium period wingback chair, the one that makes you look _every bit as mysterious and regal as you are_ , every time you sit enthroned on it, and you’ve managed to pin her to the spade side of the massive custom concupiscent platform. You can hear the wingback chair hit the floor and you spare a thought to hope it’s not broken. You had it reupholstered in lavender unicorn hide, and it’s a bitch to track those buggers, let alone find one big enough in the right color.

Both of you are down to boots and the shreds of shirts, pants utterly annihilated, bulges twisting in the air. You can see a trail of blue down her inner thigh and you are pretty well soaked yourself. She rolls and you go down across the couch and maybe you should struggle more, but dammit, you are so, so close to finally getting some. You open your legs and lock them around her hips, you can feel just the air current of her thrashing bulge on your own extremity and imagine that any second now, any second…

And that’s when a giant eye sidles up to the uncovered windows and gets its voyeuristic dandies on, complete with suckers attached to _every last window_ , even the one set in the floor of the alcove to view your rock garden.

Vriska shrieks and her bulge sheathes like it was just iced. You try to tell her to ignore WickedStepSquidMom, but it’s all over. You have a case of the worse violet shameglobes in the epic history of shame and Vriska is too busy _denying that anything ever happened_ to have any chance that anything ever will. Dammit. You are going to learn to close the curtains. You are going to go put the fear of your bulge in The Squid. Eww. Not like that. You are going to dump Vriska back on dry land and pretend that you never thought that.

You toss her a blanket to wear back because there’s no way you’re sharing your clothes when she didn’t put out. She wears her cape instead and shoves a tasseled pillow into the rolled up mass of the blanket.

You’re so upset you don’t protest and you forget to tie and blindfold her for the trip. You’re going to regret that.

*

**Eridan: Quitting Is For Loooooooosers, Try Again**

After three failed attempts to get some, you decide to do a bit more research next time. That is how you find yourself flirting online with the sharp and sexy GallowsCollaborator. Rrrr. You can feel the pitch rising in your respite block as you debate crime, punishment, and JUST1C3. You might finally get some.

You fan yourself in your contemporary soft black leather swivel chair in the underground levels of your swinging bachelor pad. If you kick your feet enough to swing around a few times, well, there are no windows and the door’s locked, so even your lusus or the Crazy Squid won’t know. Of course, you are way too dignified to contemplate something so wrigglerish.

You spin slowly and tip your head back to watch how the labyrinth tapestry on the ceiling spins, cream and fawn and ecru and sand dune. It was made on some distant planet, but clearly it was made for you. You find it very calming, at least when you are already in a contented mood.

The room is done all in soft soothing grays and a few natural taupe shades with pops of black and white. The floor is textured slate. The only color is yours, an artisan blown and pulled glass chandelier over the chaise by the modest bookcase. The fixture is shaped like a small garden of anemones and colors the pale areas of the room in soft violet, like your bioluminescence shining back at you. It was a good idea to base the room on yourself, very soothing.

Through a carved door depicting the traditional vestments of the seagoing nobility (jewelry and not much else, where do you put your _hands_ when there are no _pockets_?) the walk-in closet features an array of clothing from impressive to casually casual. There’s another chaise there, perfect for sorting together outfits and coordinating.

There are just three mirrors in the room, barely any at all, and all beveled antiques in heavy silver frames. They break and refract the light so that it shimmers, but there’s no need for anything more when the connected bathing room has strong lightening and another Crystaline mirror. The sopor slime in the ‘coon is the only thing that disrupts your color scheme and you’ve solved that problem by keeping a lid on it.

You wrap yourself in a fuzzy gray angorableatbeast plaid blanket and prop your elegantly wide webbed feet on your modern iron desk. You’ve just made arrangements for a hatedate. Maybe this will break your streak of bad luck.

*

Terezi Pyrope is a mad troll and you are clearly doomed to a life of situationally-enforced celibacy.

That was watersilk, exceedingly rare and difficult to get in your color. It cost you a perigee of allowance and a pint of blood. She just licked it and pronounced it delicious. The stains will _never_ come out.

An hour ago the two of you were sharing a meal of raw fish and hoofbeast. You had found her wicked tongue and fierce predator’s smile charming then. You hadn’t minded that she can’t, strictly speaking, understand the full genius of your comportment and accoutrements, being, technically, blind. Until about five minutes ago, you were impressed by her razor wit and her fearlessness in joining you aboard your sloop. For a landdweller that navigates by smell and sound, it was a formidable statement. But this, this, travesty of “appreciation”?!

 _It will not do_.

You drop her off on the mainland with the ruined pillow and return to sulk in your fortress of enforced solitude. You will not cry. You will be strong. You are a classy fucking seadwweller and you just want to get your bits acquainted with someone else’s bits. You’re not picky.

They just have to be passionate, intelligent, gorgeous, and utterly in hate or lovve with you, or at least willing to drop trou in a scenic locale. You’d think that someone else would be interested, you’re a good catch, passionate, intelligent, gorgeous, rich, vviolet. Everyone will need to pair up for the drones in another sweep, you’d think they’d want to be ready. If it’s this hard, you’re glad you started early.

SeahorseDad tries to tell you that there are plenty of seadwwellers in the ocean. Yeah. You know. They’re all asses, except for Feferi, who has completely moirail-zoned you and seems to be drifting out of pale with you more and more each night. You’ve messaged her more than a few times but she mostly only wants to talk about things that make you uncomfortable, that or long metaphors about cuttlefish. It feels more and more like you’re losing her, but you’re too afraid to tell her.

You sniff. WickedStepSquidMom pats you on the head. Shhhsshhh. You don’t even yell at her for getting you wet. What’s a little more saltwater when you’re already doused by a Squid?

*

**Eridan: Try Another Approach**

So this time, you start really slow. You chat for a whole two weeks with grimAuxiliatrix before you invite her to your place. Kanaya Maryam is a classy lady and you know she’ll respect your aesthetic. Maybe she’ll even respect you. Maybe you’ll even manage to do the do. Finally.

You take the sloop up the coast, anchor and wait out the day and meet Kanaya at the mouth of a river the next night. She’s slim and elegant and exotically pale and you already can’t wait to show her your pad and ask her if she made her well-tailored travelling outfit. Her belted knee-length tunic is black with flattering fluttery sleeves and a subtle silk shimmer, sign picked out in her color at the collar, pants a darker light-absorbing black with a thin stripe of jade up the outside, knee-high freshwater snaptrapbeast leather boots barely dusty and entirely scuff-less. Her hooded cloak is sleek and trimmed with gray and black variegated poucebeast fur. You are already more than a bit infatuated.

She greats you gravely and says that she is Very Pleased to See You In Person. You have a momentary shiver at the use of “See” and shake off the need to watch out for JUST1C3. You tell her that you are charmed to make her acquaintance. You offer your arm, and she accepts and the two of your stroll back to your sloop. She is so calm. You can’t imagine a little thing like StepSquidMom upsetting her. You can’t believe you just let a stranger within arm’s length so casually, but she just doesn’t read as bloodthirsty. She tells you that you have beautiful lines, that the arch of your sloop’s bow and that of your neck are both Very Aesthetically Pleasing. Five minutes in her presence and you can tell that this is going so much better than anything before.

*

It doesn’t work out. Or at least, not how you expected.

Kanaya is indeed someone who can understand your tastes, even if you politely disagree on a few topics. She admires all the rare and exotic things you have carefully selected and arranged. She shares a meal with you and compliments your cooking, even though she doesn’t eat much. You retire to your concupiscent room and things just… don’t manage to go much further. The two of you spend hours talking about fashion, she ends up measuring you for a cloak like hers, not quite as dashing as a cape, but much more useful if stranded in the sunlight.

The two of you end up in the subbasement, which you intended to be a dungeon, because no fortress is complete without one, but none of the doors close anyways because they are all crammed with the (meticulously cataloged) bulk of your hoard. Well, most of your actual hoard is back at your shiphive, but you store all the extra furnishings and materials here. What if you ruined just one ottoman and didn’t have any matching upholstery fabric? You’d have to replace them all, and that would just be wasteful.

Kanaya doesn’t just get it, she gets it at a sort of singing-the-same-internal-song, like fated-quadrants finding each other by a pull across continents.

When you flip the lights on and she sees your hoard, her hands delicately rise to cover her mouth and she sort of just exhales an **_Oh My_**.

You’re thinking that maybe even if you can’t be flush, maybe Kan’s up for pale. Feferi would probably be r-eelieved and then you’d be free to pursue her flush.

The two of you pull out some fabric and head back up to the main room. You get to talking and she confesses that she Perhaps Did Not Enjoy Dinner So Much As Your Work Deserved. You magnanimously wave her apology off and ask if there’s anything you can get her.

“Well, There Is One Thing, But It Is A Bit Unusual, And Also, Above The General Expectations One Might Have Of A Host.”

“Anything,” you promise her extravagantly. She confesses that, “As A Daywalker I Am Best Able To Gain Sustenance From Troll Blood.” Well, that was not what you were expecting, but you’re the fucking hostess with the mostest and you’re pretty sure she’s not going to rip your throat out when she’s conscientious enough to respect your upholstery. You should probably be more careful, considering how utterly wrong your last four choices have been, but careful isn’t going to land you a quad or get you laid.

She’s gentle when she tips your head back. Her hands are warm. You lean into her just a bit and she supports you. You sigh. You close your eyes. If you pretend, you can imagine someone doing that because they cared for you, not because they were hungry.

Her bite hurts, but her teeth are sharp and you doubt there will be much of a bruise outside the wound. The gentle suckle of her lips and tongue, the sound of her swallowing behind you, you lose track of how much time passes. She stops and lets you get your bearings before she lets you go. You turn to look at her and feel a bit dizzy. She helps you lean back on the fainting couch and fetches you a glass of water, shepherds you through drinking it, refills it.

Even if it’s just necessity, it feels pale. You try to remember the last time you felt this way toward Feferi and it seems very far off. You wonder if how long it’s been since Feferi felt that way toward you.

You shouldn’t be so calm about losing who knows how much of your royal violet blood, but you can’t help but bask in this unexpected, unusual serenity.

You spend the whole night and into the day watching Kan cut and piece and sew. It’s fucking poetic. She carries her scissors and needles and tapes in precisely fitted hidden pockets in her gorgeously tooled wide black belt. She’s clever and graceful and you fall asleep watching her work.

You get a rude awakening.

“Hey flail-fish-prince! Remember that time you tried to spades-me and rolled snake-eyes instead? I’ve been thinking that maybe we should give it another try. Maybe you just need practice.”

This is a nightmare right? You fell asleep without sopor, such things are to be expected. You close your eyes. The nightmare refuses your polite hint. You can hear her settle on a couch and _put her booted feet on an ottoman_.

“How did you get here anyway, Vris?”

“Magic. Well, mind control. I stole a boat. And a crew. I think I liiiiiiiike this sailing thing!”

“Eridan, Would You Introduce Us?”

“Kanaya, this is Vriska, she’s a scheming, double-crossing pirate-wannabe.” You don’t say, “She’s terrified of The Squid and she’s a menace, keep away”. See, you’re all kinds of tactful.

“Vriska, this is Kanaya, she’s way outside your league.”

“Ooooooooh? Reeeeeeeeally?” Her tone is that she believes this is a challenge and she’s not above taking it. You have a sinking feeling that you have made a terrible tactical error, but you were sound asleep and now you’re not. Where the hell is The Squid when she should be patrolling?

“Yes. She has an appreciation of the finer details of design. You would doubtless find it boring as you did previously. Unless you’ve changed your mind about spiral lathed chair legs in the post-renaissance-antipode style?” Take the bait, take the bait. She takes the bait.

“Anyhow, I changed my mind. See you later losers, I have a crew to steer.”

She storms out and you have the feeling that you have loosed something dangerous on the rest of the world. The world can deal, _you_ are dealing with important business.

That night, Kanaya piles you as you’ve never been piled before and you spill all the details, even the parts with The WickedSquid voyeuristic jollies, how you and Fef are growing apart, and your daymares about failing to feed Gl'bgolyb on time. It feels painful and good and fiercely cathartic, in phases and all at once, and you know that you’re so pale for her the thought of pailing her makes you sick.

You learn about her lusus and her dreams and her zombie problem and her strifekind. You promise to take her out to the nearby beach and teach her to shoot. You are sure that she is magnificent with her chainsawkind, but you’ll feel better knowing she doesn’t have to get so close unless she wants to.

You spend another few nights together, learning each other, practicing shooting, watching her stitch. She finishes the cloak with a beautifully intricate knotted clasp as you are rather lacking in the specialty hardware department. Two dozen different types of light bulbs and glowworms you have, and you wield a mean screwdriver, but, beyond buttons and needles and thread, you’ve a scarcity of sewing notions. A few hours online with your credit chit will fix that later. She lined the hood and cuffs in artic barkbeast fur. You look fucking magnificent in it. (If you could just find someone to fuck, than everything _would_ be magnificent.)

You sail her back to the river’s mouth and spend a last day together at anchor below deck. She stays awake for most if not all the time, while around noon you fall asleep in the cot listening to her pulse, the waves, and the soft rustle of her needle working. Her clothed shoulder and bare neck are warm against your cheek and fins. The next dusk you row her to shore with a bolt of cloth from your hoard and take your leave. You promise to keep up with her online. She promises to visit within the perigee.

You should really talk to Fef before then.

*

**Eridan: Romance The Cat O’Nine Tales**

You meet Nepeta online. You’re attempting to suss out a few good prospects for a pitch or flush dalliance and she contacts you “beclaws Equius said you’re a very noble seahorse”. Well, you can’t help but feel charitable toward anyone who assesses your character so accurately.

You find yourself participating in a few roleplays, and it’s not entirely unamusing even if you’re not automatically afforded the respect you deserve. It’s just a bit nostalgic for you, like when you started fishpunning for Fef.

Nepeta is your age, you know this from your initial age/quadrants/location query, but reading her chats means you have to puzzle out lots of land puns going on the strength of what you hunt and general knowledge. You don’t actually think that the two of you are quadrant material, she is, after all, only a green, but she’s knots better than Terezi , the clown, or Equius, and if she tries to stalk you, you’re miles from the shore and she can’t mindcontrol a crew into chasing you down. So you invite her over to sea if purrhaps weel get along in purrson.

Equius sends you a STRONGLY worded message regarding his moirail’s safety while in your surf. It’s like he doesn’t trust you or something. Sweet little starfish urchins! Good contractors are hard to find, you’re not going to do something to mess that up. You sail on over and pick up one ridiculously cute meow-beast of a troll-gal, and argue about puns all the way back.

She’s a quick study and you don’t mind showing her what ropes are for what, how to judge the wind and currents, how to steer. It’s surprisingly rewarding, for all that it doesn’t fit a single quadrant, and a few weeks ago you wouldn’t have bothered.

The two of you stay up all day. You may, purrhaps, have been unwisely purrsuaded into jumping on the bespoke concupiscent couch, just to test the springs of course. The two of you practice bounding from the heart side to the spade side, and back, without landing on the curvy couch stem between. You can manage pretty well with a running head start or a hand planted on the couch between. She can manage the bound without the head start or the hand, but with the head start, she can flip on the way. You totally don’t show any sign of how completely awesome and unfair you think this is.

You show off all your trophies, the icebear pelt in the concupiscent bathing room, the seagoat head with its spiraling horns in the rock garden viewing alcove. You already know she can probably count the seventeen furs and ten leathers that went into the pillows and couches and the huge concupiscent platform, so you take her to your display block.

At the edge of the viewing alcove, a wrought iron spiral staircase in the minimalist style ascends to your tower library and trophy room through the jaws of a modestly sized megalodon. The library is done in a more contemporary style, regular ashenwood shelves supporting the sensibly organized volumes and grubs under the corresponding taxidermy: ahoolian vampire, bunyip, chupacabra, djinn, etc.

She insists on trying out the laddered hammocks here, and shortly ascends to the topmost one, looking down at you from behind a frame of the modest horns of the small jackalope, a positively vicious animal whose death brought you more than just victory but revenge. You settle into the hammock one level down from her, behind the kelpie, and you compare hunting notes.

You’re a long range specialist, riflekind, but she’s a close range specialist, clawkind, stalk and pounce and slay. It’s very impressive and it has formed her short stature into a heavy muscled work of living art. You can admit that much.

Sadly, there’s just no pitch or flush spark, on either side. You end up splitting a large grouper and talking about how hard it is to find love or hate. She’s a sympathetic listener and has a few decent stories of her own in return, just snappy and humorous enough to not be dawdling overlong in pale territory. She tells you that she is purrositive that you will both find a special someone or two. She eats heartily but neatly, licking her claws clean after. You think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship and you are totally going to tease Equius with hints you’re flush until he breaks or she throws the game.

The next night, you teach her to swim in the shallowest areas of the reef. She’s terribubble at floating, all muscled weight and short fingers and toes. Even with a full breath, she’s better at diving, rebounding off the floor and springing back up, but she can manage a decent barkbeast crawl, enough that you’re not afraid to turn your back on her. She’s stalking the eel, which is as long as she is, holding her breath as long as she can between trips to the surface. The eel gets fed up and strikes, but she gets a good grip and wrestles it until it flees to sulk in one of its hideaways. She rebounds to the surface, already laughing as she breaks into the air, her wet flying hair completing a fanning arc that sprays drops of water into the air to catch the moonlight.

The two of you spend two more nights like this, swimming and pushing to one-up each other with hunting stories. You teach her how to find the tastier things in the coral reef, show her what’s poisonous or venomous, and laugh as she inefficiently chases a school of palm size silverdenarii until she rockets to the surface with her single success. Then she drops back down to stuff it down your pants. You absolutely do not shriek.

She tries to convince you to install a slide from the top of the trophy room to the lagoon and does manage to convince you, stupidly, to hang out the window in question to “e-salinate the purrain”. Then she uses the opportunity to push you out the window. You pop back up to the surface to tell her off and she jumps down. You have to dive just to avoid a collision, and you pop back up even more infuriated, ready to yell at her in the air to be sure she understands how displeased you are. She grins at you as she surfaces.

“Purrly that would be more fun with a slide, Eridan!”

You look up at the window. You look down at her smiling face, grin fit to split it like a particularly friendly shark. You dunk her. Then you sternly tell her that it’s time for her to earn her dinner and you go back inside to retrieve the fishing spears. She doesn’t look the least bit repentant. Your hair is a mess.

Stripped down to just a loin clawth, she looks her full age, without the distraction of that wrigglerish hat or her unfitted clothes, a clear sign that you need to introduce her to Kanaya. You spare a moment to regret that you won’t be more intimately acquainted with that glorious stretch of muscle, another to wonder when you decided you wouldn’t just take what you want. Forcing yourself on her might get you a one day pitch stand, but it’s no good for a long term relationship, whatever the nighttime soaps would claim. You find that you would regret it if she disliked you, Equius’s sensibilities aside.

Still, when you drop her off on the mainland and purromise to stay in touch, you feel hollow.

You can see the tip of the tail of your tatzelwurm-shaped pillow poking out of her bag and you don’t protest. She likes it more than you did anyhow, it’s really not your style.

You watch her wave and lope off. You are running out of time to find a decent bucket partner. Gl'bgolyb is in her hibernation season, but in just over a perigee she’ll start to wake and you’ll be too busy keeping her fed to devote your attention to this properly.

*

**Eridan: Be the Knight with the Shining Rifle**

You think that your luck must be changing, because the next time you go trawling for a guest, voluntary or otherwise, you find a ready-labeled one, a lowblood being chased by a mob across a flat beach, pushing their lusus in front of them.

From the deck of your sloop, you can see that the mob’s target is short, nubby horned, dressed all in grays with no sign of blood, hemoanonymous. That’s how you know they must be a lowblood. Of course, the lusus is a lobstrosity, which make for good eating, but that’s a bit confusing because they have red blood in oxygenated environments and that shit ain’t on the spectrum.

You figure entering the scene as the heroic rescuer can only help your chances at a flush conquest. The lowblood is too tiny to be a good pitch prospect. If they were psionic, it’d be a different story, but if they were psionic they’d be using it against the crowd.

You let loose with a brief flurry of shots, aiming for calves and shoulders and arms and hands, a few shots above heads to get the mob moving away. You take off some unlucky bugger’s left horn when they move at the last moment, and they freeze and start staggering in circles when they start up again. You don’t actually want to incur any more revenge cycles, so you keep yourself in check, and pick off a few rocks after that. Nothing seems to scare a troll so much as the split-second in which they realize they _almost_ bit it.

The crowd moves off and you swoop in to the rescue, find yourself _attempting_ to rescue a profoundly ungrateful rustie. (You assume he’s a rustie, maybe a brown? Who else would bother to be anonymous about it? You can’t blame him for being ashamed.). He’s not interested in coming with you, he tells you. (His language is much worse than that). The lusus skrees at you. You figure that your charms will be more evident in the lush shelter of your swinging sex pad so you convince him to come with you voluntarily by asking if he really has a safe hive to go back to.

“Fuck you,” he tells you, arms crossed, trying not to cry.

Yes, he’s utterly pitiably and you want to wrap him up in your arms and just make tender, tender, flush love, but this might be a long term project, he looks very stubborn…

You carry him away on your sloop of lovve.

The lusus skrees at you the entire way.

*

**Eridan: Fail To Impress**

You introduce him to the finer details of your carefully curated swinging seadwweller cavernous hivehold of lovve, point out your stellar design decisions, the intricacies and historical contexts.

“I’m precocious,” you confess.

“You mean pretentious.” He doesn’t uncross his arms.

*

Three nights later, you’ve tried everything you can to tempt him to make the first move. He eats your food, uses your husktop, and has ordered a staggering amount of roe for his lusus. He stole your respite block and locked you out. There’s no food in there but the plumbing works fine. He won’t die of thirst. You check the kitchen. There’s a case of cans and a can opener missing. At least he has good taste. He took all your favorites.

Argh. Is a bit of thank you sex too much to expect? Or a bit of honest pity?

You haven’t been able to reach your closet in three nights. This is intolerable.

*

SeahorseDad and The Lobstrosity have taken over your concupiscent suite to gossip about the two of you. There are puddles of water on the bespoke spade-heart couch and you shake your fist at them both as you mop them up for something like the tenth time. SeahorseDad wants to know why you never order _him_ cases of roe.

“Maybe,” you tell him, “Maybe you should get your enormous rump in gear and go fishing on your own. Maybe you should get back into condition so that when the two of us need to go hunting again, you aren’t panting to keep up.” You kick him out of the hive and tell him to go find his own dinner.

The Lobstrosity skrees at you, sadly, and you know he’s critiquing you for failing your filial duties.

“Shut up, you freaky crustacean.”

The Lobstrosity trundles off, still muttering.

SeahorseDad doesn’t come back for the rest of the night, or the day after. You ruin your claw lacquer worrying.

*

The lowblood finds your secret passageways, roots out your every architectural secret and private bolt hole. You’d be flattered, except some of those were supposed to be _private_.

You find him curled up in the subbasement behind a fake wall with a romance book in the wriggler cocoon you made of an antique seagrape wine caste. He’s used a sock to shield the vintage mead bottle lantern, vintage label proudly proclaiming that it was bottled in the year of the Summoner’s execution. There are crumbles of vintage label in his hair. He has utterly demolished its historical value. The further mystery is, you don’t own any romance books and the drones no longer deliver here. That was one of the reasons you offed them, to keep your privacy. You are intrigued and highly offended.

After a brief verbal spar he disappears again. You head for your private respite block as fast as dignity allows. You need to be sure he hasn’t soiled the carpets or chipped your chandelier or something. You will beat him with your vacuum if he did. “ _Hold on_ ,” you silently think at your dearly missed walk-in closet, “ _Daddy’s coming!_ ”

You don’t make it in time.

_*_

You surprise him the next night in your personal bath. You test the door to your actual respite block on a regular basis, and this time it was unlocked… or rather, the lock was engaged but failed to latch. You really should get that fixed, but it’s all to your advantage at the moment...

You swan in to rescue your hair product and freeze at the sudden company. He freezes too. He’s built well under all those clothes. Mmm.

“Looking good, short stuff!” You could have done better, but he really is _distracting_. There’s a clump of soap bubbles sliding down his front and you can’t help but tilt your head a little to follow it.

“Fuck you!” He usually does better than that, so maybe you’re distracting too? He’s got the soap clenched in one fist like he might chuck it at you and he’s bent just a bit to try to conceal his nether regions, but he doesn’t sink back down, it’s not defensible. Mmm, soapy shenanigans…

“Sure thing, little bit, moving kinda fast compared to usual.”

“NO. Argh! It was an invective, not an invitation.

“Eridan.

“Eridan. Unfurl your frivolously frilly earfins and listen up. I am going to impart to you a freaking truth and you are going to tenderly cradle it in the shell-shaped drum of your hearing apparatuses until such a time as you are ready to receive it into the dense matter that inhabits your brainpan.”

He is shaking the bar of soap at you as he says this, and he’s straightened up to properly project his voice at you, like sheer volume will transmit his message from his brain to yours. He’s so adorable vibrating with anger. You have to force yourself to pay attention.

“Flapping your facegash, also known as talking, is not the same thing as communicating. They share a lot of territory and get all nice and cozy in the Venn diagram, but the one is shit going out and the other is shit being transmitted, translated, and _comprehended_ on the other end.”

Who is this Vvennn, and do you need to off him? Has he seen Karkat in the bath?

“I do not want to have sex with you. I do not want to pile you. I do not want to hurt you. I don’t know where this leaves us except that you need to stop trying for one and two, or three is going to change.”

His voice is so grim that you can’t help but pay attention now, but what he says next is just a bit friendlier, almost plaintive. You like hearing him in all his moods.

“Do you think that we can just be hivemates or something? We can switch off food preparation, laundry, and cleaning. You get company, and might possibly learn to communicate without making everyone you meet run the other way over your solicitations. I get to not be dead. Does this sound doable?”

And he’s just so pitiable that you can’t help but agree. You probably shouldn’t tell him that part.

*

**Eridan: Try Again**

You continue your online hunt for a red or pitch partner. After a week or two of spitting invective back and forth with TwinArmageddons, an obnoxious psionic landdweller whose screen name you found by snooping on Karkat’s palmtop, you decide that maybe you ought to meet in person. You’ve been meaning to find a use for those psionic inhibiting shackles Equius rigged up.

You arrange a chess tournament between the three lusii and appoint Karkat the judge in the far end of the lagoon, in an almost separate grotto shielded from the view of the open sky and the entrances of your hive. This should keep all four of them occupied for the rest of the night, because you have set a prize of as much roe as the winner can eat.

You really hope that SeahorseDad pulls through, or that The Lobstrosity is smarter than it looks, because you imagine SquidMom can really pack it away. All the pieces are live crabs with different colored anemones on their shells, so the games should last longer as everyone tries to keep their pieces in line or convince their opponent that their crabs really were there legally… Sometimes you really outdo yourself.

TwinArmageddons, or one Sollux Captor, is exactly as irritating in person as online. In fact, it’s no wonder he’s obsessed with twos because this troll is like obnoxious squared. You think you could really get something pitch going here.

It’s dislike at first sight, or rather, he calls you a damp douche and you call him a twiggy firestarter, but alas, you can already tell that it’s a hate that would fizzle. He’s just kind of pathetic and not enough to manage red full time. Still, he’s made the trip, so you might as well make a run at the bucket.

Refreshingly, Sollux doesn’t have Karkat’s archaic sensibilities and tells you that he’d rather pail you than listen to you any longer. Alas, Karkat interrupts. You probably should have told him you had company. Actually, you probably should have said something previously, considering that they must know each other. This might get awkward.

“What are you, the village velocipede?” Sollux snaps to attention at Karkat’s distain. You’re kind of offended. He’s way more interested now than he was about getting you undressed.

“Wwhat?”

“Velocipede. Two-wheeled conveyance. Bi-cycle.” Sollux laughs, and now you’re incensed because it really is an obnoxious laugh and you have the sinking sensation that you are about to miss your opportunity to get a pitch dalliance in. At least you can keep Karkat. You do your pants back up and turn to him.

“Howw silly. Seadwwellers don’t need such things.”

“Yeah, hive rings don’t either.”

“You’re funny Kar. I’m glad I rescued you.” You’d totally sweep in and ruffle his hair, but you think he might bite you.

“I think you mean abducted.”

“Same fin.”

It’s at this point that they realize that they know each other, like they’d never met in the flesh or something. Landdwellers are glubbing weird.

“KK?!”

“Sollux?!”

“That’th your ‘crazy theadwelling involuntary landlord’?”

“I have the excuse of abduction. You were just caught with your pants down. What’s your excuse?”

“Eh, it’th free thex and it’th pretty clear he’th a virgin, so it’th not like he can be teeming with thex parathiteth.”

“Every time I think I have ascertained the depths to which you sink, I find there are new subbasements. Why do I bother?”

Karkat’s tone is almost fond, and they are both ignoring you.

You fasten your shirt back up and retreat to the food block to soothe your disappointment with silverdenarii cakes and reassume your much dinged dignity. You can hear them anyways and start up a batch of spicy sauce in the blender to block them out.

You end up making way too much of fishcakes and sauce both. You use the extra as an excuse to be sure they’re not messing up your upholstery, but they’re not in your concupiscent suite. You check the tower and your respite block and find them in the basement levels in a nest of wires. It looks like a pretty comfy pile actually, though they seem to be trying really hard to not be close enough to each other to fuel such aspersions, even as you eavesdrop on them talking about mutual friends, all worried about Karkat. Have you ever been so awkward?

You take a long look at Sollux on his hands and knees, in the mess of your broadcasting and pickup apparatuses, the dismembered remains of a thankfully spare husktop. The knobs of his vertebrae march down his spine under the thin cheap tee-shirt, his bony elbows jerking back sporadically as he mutters, at the wires, at Karkat, the occasional invective at you. Karkat, behind Sollux’s back where the psionic can’t see him, Karkat looks more relaxed than you’ve ever seen him. You didn’t realize you’ve never seen a real smile from him.

You leave the plate by the door and don’t bother to knock before you leave. You know when things are hopeless.

Sollux leaves the next night, but not before threatening you with surveillance, among other things. You threaten him back. It would be rude to ignore him. Karkat rolls his eyes.

You walk the psionic out to the dock and shove him off. It doesn’t surprise you in the least when he just hovers to tell you that he’ll hold you responsible for Karkat’s continued health. Wweh, wweh, wweh, like you’d do anything else. You roll your eyes, the two of you flick a middle finger at each other and he zooms off. His silhouette is oddly wide. SquidMom waves a tentacle in goodbye, traitor.

It should surprise you that Karkat didn’t go with him, but if there are mobs after him, you don’t know where Karkat would be safer than here. You could wish he’s staying out of fondness for you, but you’ll take practicality if it leaves you more time to convince him. You’re just not sure about what precisely you want to convince him. To be flush for you? To be a pail partner? To let you touch him without him worrying about what you’d do? This is getting far more complicated than it should. And you still haven’t gotten to the bucket with anyone.

You get back inside and realize that the yellowblood absconded with both your striped golden pouncebeast pillows, the ones with the fancy goldworked bees.

*

**Eridan: Accept Delivery**

A few nights later, you get another visit from Vriska. You’d say unpleasant visit, but that’s to be assumed. This time at least, SquidMom is holding the ship in place while SeahorseDad zooms in to alert you with wild snorting and tail lashing. You go out to the dock to see what’s on fire.

On the positive side, nothing’s on fire. On the negative side, Vriska is on your dock. There’s a trussed up landdweller with positively enormous horns at her feet. He’s lying awkwardly on the dock, gagged, arms bound behind him, unbound legs sprawled to the sides like he’s not even trying to get any leverage, neck crooked with the weight and angle of his horns. Vriska hauls him upright to his knees by a horn and shoves him at you. You catch him by one shoulder as a reflex. It’s unlikely that he’s a bomb, so wwhatevver. You ignore his weight and look at Vriska. She rolls her eyes.

“Well, you’re pathetic and he’s pathetic, so I figured you could be pathetic together and maybe I wouldn’t have to look after both of you.”

You raise a brow. You’re trying not to engage overly much.

“He’s a present, Fin-face, say thank you!”

Still. He is pretty pathetic. All big eyes, gray filling in with deep brown, practically screaming “Please don’t cull me!”. Still gagged.

Vriska’s already stomped off, you might as well get a look at the goods. You hum a bit and lean further into the brown’s personal space and are caught off guard when Karkat wallops you in the back of the head.

You rear back to clutch at the offended spot, but you manage not to drop the brown. You think Karkat might have abraded some hair follicles. Yes, you are definitely holding several dozen loose hairs. What next? Chewing on your appliances? Peeing on your furniture?

“You are a sleazy bucket of seething weasel-weevils.”

“That’s a tad bit harsh, Kar, don’tcha think.” You think he must have hit you harder than you thought, because you’re more bemused than angry and the Eridan of a few perigees past would have already hit him back.

“No, that is probably the most accurate assessment of your character which I have henceforth managed to articulate through my much abused squawk bladder.”

He pokes you in the tendons of your wrist with one dull but hard claw and you let go. He steadies the brown and slides a knife behind the gag and starts to saw outward.

“He has a name. He is not yours. He belongs to himself. However, we are going to run short of supplies with three people, so I think you should go out to your boat now and I will send in the supplies request and you can go fetch it.” He doesn’t look at you as he says this, he’s frowning and concentrating on not cutting the brown.

“Kar. Kar. Kar?!” Why isn’t he paying attention to you? Is he that mad? Were you really that rude?

“Yes. Eridan.”

“Don’t you need my passcodes?”

“No. Go.”

You knew he was ordering somehow. But how did he guess? Does he really listen when you rant about period furniture? You knew it! He’s perfect.

Before you leave, you give SquidMom a stern talking to regarding the fact that, while arresting Vriska’s ship was necessary, the biggest danger is Vriska herself. It’s not like she doesn’t have enough arms to take care of them both. SquidMom is far less repentant than she should be, or at least that’s how you interpret her. You’re not sure how seadwweller sign language translates to eight arms and two tentacles, but the whole thing seems to involve a lot of flailing and you don’t feel properly respected, but how would you spank a squid anyhow?

By the time you’ve got your sloop ready to go, with enough time for Vriska and her crew to get well out, (the absolute _last_ thing you want is Vriska to come back while you’re _gone_ ), Karkat’s got the brown untied and ungagged and sitting in a more comfortable position, but still not standing. The brown looks relieved. They’re talking, but you can’t hear them over the distance and waves.

*

**Feferi: Visit The Sour-Fish That Is Your Moirail To Cheer Him Up Before You Maybe Break Up**

You haven’t heard from your moirail-eel for a few weeks and you’re a little worried. Just a little.

Eridan can be standoffish and grouchy but even though he needs alone time, he usually comes to visit when he needs to rant, which pretty much translates as he’s in need of a good papping, but he’s been entirely quiet since Gl'bgolyb’s sweeply slumber started. You’re not sure that that’s a good thing, because your sour-fish needs to be prodded when he gets locked into bad ideas, and who knows what he’s up to. He’s so high maintenance!

You care for him, but it’s pretty exhausting, and you feel bad because everyone should have someone to care about and be cared for by, but you sometimes wish he had someone else to lean on.

You track him down by logging into his account and checking his orders, wait for another to pop up and pack a small bag to go meet the delivery drones. When he sails back, you hitch a ride, whee. Why haven’t you tried this before? He doesn’t notice, too busy ranting to himself about “Karkat! Why am I letting a lowwblood tell me wwhat ta do?” ( _OooOOooh, do you smell raymance in the water?)_

When he pulls in to the vaulted cavern with its circle of framed sky, you’re actually pretty impressed. He’s still ranting as he moors the boat and fusses with the knots, so you slip inside to make friends.

His friends are super cute, especially Tavros! And he’s super nice! Karkat is super funny!

A half hour later you’re having a very silly argument with your moirail-eel.

“Fef. Fef. Fef. You can’t take him to your hive.”

“Don’t be shellfish, Eridan!”

“No. Sea-reef-iously. One, he’s mine. Two, he’d pop like bladderwort at those depths. Get your own toys if you want to wreck one.”

Tavros looks nervous. Karkat’s pinching the bridge of his nose and shaking his head.

“Eridan, he’s not a _toy_. And we just want to go see the fish. Tavros can _talk_ with them. I want to know what my cuttlefish have to say! But I guess we can just stay here.”

“No. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m dealing with serious business here.”

“Eridan, you’re trawling for a bucket partner.”

“Like I said, it’s very serious!”

“Then we can go to Tavros’s place! There are lots of land animals I’ve never sea-n.”

“NO! Just. Just go use my place, the passcode’s your wriggling day. You can borrow the rowboat to tow him out there without drowning.”

“What about the sloop?”

“Fef. You don’t know how to sail.”

“Doesn’t it have an on button?” You’re seagoat kidding, but you can’t kelp yourself, he’s so funny when he’s wound up.

“Fef. When you have a ship and a helmsman, you say go and it goes. The sloop is a classical pre-Condesce design and it doesn’t have modern amenities like that.”

“Sounds primitive!”

“Classical!” He’s highly offended, all his fins flared with indignation and you shouldn’t find it so funny. You’re really not the best pale partners for one another, as much as you might _like_ one another.

“I think you’re making fins up to seaport what you want them to be. But you look busy, so we’ll just be going. Thanks, Eri-fish!”

You leave Eridan with his flush crush and his insecurities and a big hug and you abscond with the cute landdweller and an extra cushion with very sparkly scrollwork tentacles. You take Eridan’s rowboat and you tickle the squid before you go. Tavros confirms that this is in fact StepSquidMom, and you approve. She’s very wiggly.

She also has something very interesting to say about all of Eridan’s visitors and, as much as you didn’t need to know what her opinion of Eridan’s naked butt is (it needs fattening up (you agree but don’t want to think about the circumstances in which she spied it)), she has something very interesting to say about a jade and a green, as well as Karkat. You’re so glad he’s making friends! When you get back to his hive, you and Tavros are going to get to the bottom of this.

You swim off towing the boat and it’s actually fun, just like riding the sloop’s waves was. Tavros is good company and you meet some dolphinatins on the way with a reel sense of humor.

The two of you make yourself at hive at Eridan’s hive and you log into his accounts again.

Hmm. Kanaya, or grimAuxiliatrix is quite forthright, and you like her a lot. The two of you rearrange Eridan’s diamond quadrant without informing him immediately of the change in custody. He’s busy anyhow, it’ll keep. Right now you’re going to feed Tavros and find him a comfy chair by a window so he can lure some fish in to chat.

*

**Aradia: Be The Badass You Are**

It’s not quite mid-night when a psionic rust blood buzzes in to intrude upon your domain. You’re still slick with sopor slime and not fit for company, but they are not so polite as to wait upon your convenience. You’ve slept late because you were so upset about Feferi and Tavros and life in general that you spent hours ranting at Kar, who nodded his head, ate sweetened iced beast milk from the container, and told you that you were an idiot. You’re pretty sure that the idiot part means you haven’t cheated on Kanaya. Or Feferi. You still really need to talk to Fef.

You don’t know why you’re flush for this insolent lowwblood, but you know that if he asked you’d have swam out and back to the mainland, just to get him a refill before the delivery drones could get to it. It would have wrecked your hair. You wouldn’t have cared if he smiled at you. It’s a good thing your freezer is full. You have a very discerning and strategic mind.

So. The rustie flies in to interrogate you over where Tavros is. You wonder when you lost all hope of privacy. Also, people keep taking your cushions, what’s with that?

There’s some hand waving and yelling and foot stamping, and well, she’s more patient than most would be until you finish your entirely-earned, not-in-the-least-wrigglerish tantrum.

You smooth your hair back into place, assure her that Tavros is fine in the company of the only seadwweller you know who wouldn’t hurt a flying fish, and won’t that just be a mess when she has to challenge the empress, and would the psionic-who-has-undoubtedly-burned-a-lot-of-calories-flying-out like to stay for lunch?

She acquiesces, and you can’t help but notice, that while she could benefit from Kanaya’s arts, she’s a whole lot more collected than Fef. And, well, it’s almost traitorous, but you’re already plotting to make sure Fef succeeds in her challenge, so danger really is your alter ego… maybe Aradia might like to have a bit of input into the future of Alternia as more than a potential engine? Aradia would. You remove yourselves to the food block. The Lobstrosity is welcome to stop snickering at any time now.

Over a lunch of kippers and soup you modestly accept compliments on your décor. Aradia, it seems, has a familiarity and passion for ancient stonework and art, much akin to your fervor for period furniture and décor.

Karkat joins you, rolling his eyes as the two of you discuss the minutia of the mosaic, but he graciously shares his hoard of cold confections, and doesn’t criticize you for anything, so you will take this as a win in your continuing campaign.

It seems that Aradia not only knows Tavros, she also knows Karkat, Sollux, Terezi, and, you both agree on the adverb, unfortunately knows Vriska. You’ve had enough time to come to terms with the terrible incident with Vriska and SquidMom and you are able to relate it humorously and lightly. You can see from the shine of her eyes that she cherishes any chinks in Vriska’s formidable armor. Aradia and Karkat don’t have your defenses against Vriska’s talent. You take a moment to imagine being a lowwblood and shudder.

It’s still not long past midnight when the three of you head out into the reef. Aradia wants to see the coral structures or go spelunking, and of the two, you’d rather that if you’re going to drown a landdwweller, you intend that it only be done intentionally.

Karkat has never been interested in swimming, at least you didn’t think so. He lets SquidMom move him around, pointing and gesticulating to indicate where he wants to go, but he’s never shown any interest in submersion. He’s bribed SeahorseDad with roe and caught a few rides, but again, never showed much hope of leaving.

The three of you shuck your shirts and leave them on the dock. Aradia shucks her skirt too, and, unlike Nepeta, she doesn’t wear a loincloth, but something tight and black with skull-strewn lace, a holster for her upper adipose tissue and tight lacy pants that barely make it past her hips both ways. It’s super sexy and if you hadn’t been plotting the succession, and angling for Karkat’s red quad, and if she hadn’t been squarely parked in Sollux’s something-or-‘nother… Well, a bit of admiration doesn’t hurt.

Karkat rolls his eyes and calmly slips into the water, hands still on the dock, with barely a splash. The water on this side is shallow and he surveys the area, then turns back to you. Aradia follows with a whoop and splash and you slip in after. You’re not submerged fully yet, so your opercula are still closed, but as you shuffle in a bit deeper you switch over. Aradia drags Karkat over to examine your visible innards and you blush, but they don’t try to poke so you let them.

Aradia shamelessly brushes a few fingers across the outermost fringe of your gills and you clench your hands because you don’t think she’s going to try anything bad but it tickles and it’s a vulnerable position to be in and you just don’t even know what to think, she’s utterly shameless and entrancing like Feferi and she’s everything you’ve been told is _low_.

She drags Karkat’s hand over to feel, and now you really are blushing so hard it feels like your blood pressure is dropping. Kar is blushing too, so at least you aren’t the only one who feels steamtrolled.

You lead them both out to the shallowest parts of the reef and definitively prove several things. Psionics work just fine in water and flying prepares trolls just fine for moving in three dimensions. Psionics can pull airbubbles under water. Karkat can swim just fine. SeahorseDad and The Squid have been holding out on you.

You give them the same rundown of what’s venomous or poisonous as you gave Nepeta, and turn them loose to catch their dinner. Karkat is determined, but not very good at it, and he keeps going after fish that can swim faster than he can. He’d do better to go after clams and such since the one time you caught crabs for dinner he looked gobsmacked and sick like you suggested eating The Lobstrosity. You kill lusii, you don’t _eat_ them. You’re not a _monster_. The crabs were freed and have never shown any sign of gratitude, impertinent buggers.

Aradia pulls whole schools of confused fish toward her and lets them go again. She sits at the bottom and pulls streams of air to herself as small fish come to explore the cloud of her hair and the shining little bubbles trapped therein. Smiling, serene in what should be an alien environment, eyes lowered to pet a small curious electric eel, skin tone almost exactly the right shade, she looks more like Feferi than anyone but Feferi, regardless of fins and gills. You feel cautiously hopeful that you might have a chance when the challenge rolls around. You know that you’re no good at persuading other trolls to see your point of view. With Aradia, you might not have to.

In the end, there’s nothing but clams and canned goods for dinner, but Karkat is smiling, both of them are, and you can’t complain.

There’s an hour or so of companionable silence in the rock viewing alcove, everyone on their own palmtop. You can hear them both clicking away, but no sound or eargrubs in evidence, so they must be chatting with frenemies or clade or something. Does Karkat have anyone in his quads? You realize you’ve never asked.

Aradia convinces both of you to slap on some sopor and have a “sleepover” in the library trophy room. Yes, there is no possible way that this can go wrong, suspended from high hammocks, dangling over a spiral of horned and toothed trophies above a hard floor above a wrought iron staircase. You’re still distracted by the set of lacy black underthings drying in the bathing room so you fail to object as strenuously as perhaps you ought. Aradia’s back in her blouse and skirt… so she must not be wearing anything under them. Oh. My. _Glub_.

Karkat looks grimly determined not to protest. Aradia flies up to the topmost hammock, as happy as a flapbeast on a perilous perch. Of course, like the flapbeasts, she can fly. Karkat climbs up to the one just below her and you settle in the third with the packet of sopor and your plaid blanket. The top two hammocks are singles but the third down is a great big nest bowl woven into a wooden rim and it could fit all three of you. You slap some sopor on and wave the packet in Aradia’s direction. She flies it to Karkat and applies some herself, and starts telling ghost stories, and you have to admit, the shine of the glass eyes in the animals get pretty creepy.

You get a few of your own in, haunted ships and denizens of the deep to contrast with her abandoned temples and curses and _DEAD PEOPLE SHE’S SEEN_ , _oh my **glub**_ , and Karkat returns a creepy couple of his own all featuring deceased neighbors or this-happened-to-someone-known-by-someone-I-know. You lay awake and try to mentally total how many times you’ve eaten grubsauce and you’re pretty sure you’re safe, but what if seadwwellers are extra sensitivve? You don’t notice when you start to doze, even though you’re trying not to fall asleep.

There are soft creaks every time one of you shifts and the air is cold as it makes its way through the tower, the hammocks, your blanket. You wake up enough several times to re-wrap yourself and drop off again.

It’s probably about midday and the room is dark, lights off and just a hint of light from the dimmed window, when you feel a wild wobble in your horn sense and move just in time as Karkat, having dropped off to his own uneasy sleep, almost drops the rest of the way down. Fortunately, your hammock is so wide he hits it before falling further, and, with a wild lunge of your own, you counterbalance his sudden weight until he rolls toward the center and lies gasping.

“Kar?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Karkat, are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine, go to sleep, crabsnatcher.” His voice is raspier than usual and you can feel the vibrations of his shivers through the ropes. You feel the hammock sway as he tries to orient himself and climb back up.

“Kar, wwhy don’t you just stay? I havve a blanket. It’s really soooffft,” you wheedle this last part and can feel him give in, still half asleep and not actually eager to climb back up. You are feeling a little shocky yourself with the relief that he didn’t hit one of the support ropes instead of the edge. You’re proud that your fear doesn’t bleed into your voice.

He sort of inevitably rolls toward the center and you scoot back in to meet him before the hammock tips too far in your direction, offer him the blanket. He’s accepting it, your hands almost touching, when there’s a brief rain of objects coming at you both and you lunge forward to shield him with your body. You can feel him braced for the impact under you. Several surprisingly soft impacts reveal the rain to be pillows and cushions and bolsters, though you don’t know when Aradia managed to float them up to her hammock without you noticing, the sneak thief. The culprit herself lands a moment later and a soft but cheery proclamation of “Pillowfight!” greets you before they all disappear for a moment to whump you again. You pull a tumbledove down pillow off your horns and sneeze as some of the stuffing escapes. You move back so you’re beside Karkat instead of on top of him.

Aradia settles herself on Karkat’s other side, and whatever ideas you had of politely maintaining some of his personal space disappear. With three people the hammock sides become so steep that there’s no way you can do anything but curl together. Karkat puts up a little sleepy grumbling, but subsides quickly and drops off to sleep once he stops shivering. Aradia gives you a soft “Good Day” and you follow. They are both so warm. You’ve never slept so close to anyone but Feferi and Kanaya. If you had been fully awake when Aradia tried it, you’d have protested, you’d have been afraid to wake in a sleeprage, but you are so tired, and they are so warm, and the pile of pillows around and above you is so cozy…

Dusk comes without incident.

*

At breakfast, the two landdwwellers make a ridiculous list of foods Karkat misses (nut butter sounds _awful_ ) and Aradia promises to visit to further discuss your plans. Karkat demands to know what you’re discussing and Aradia brings him up to speed. Three really does make it a conspiracy, and it sounds like Sollux will soon make it four. Karkat should be angry that you’ve effectively put a price on his head but he drops his own bomb on you.

“I’m a mutant, Eridan. The Empress may not know I exist, but she still wants me dead for existing. I’m already a traitor.” He lifts his chin and stares you in the eye and all you can think of is that he looks so brave and there’s a tiny fleck of spice on his lip and you want to reassure him, and you want to brush it away with a gentle finger. And if anyone wants him dead, you’ll kill them first.

You tell him he’s safe here, as long as you respire.

*

Aradia flies off like the kismesis-granting fairy in “In which a seadweller sleeps through their adult maturation, pitch pailing, and bucket filling, and wakes in time to skewer their rapist of a pseudo-kismesis on a fiber winding apparatus”.

You’d say she flits off gracefully, except that as she hovers and dips for a moment to drop one last tidbit like a seadwweller-seeking missile, you can see she’s got your eiderdown pillow with the weaving of Artmis hunting Aktion with his own lusus stuffed half in her bag. It’s not even subtle, she’s just taking it.

“I’ll be back in a week with Sollux and Terezi, but I need to check on Tavros now and sound out Feferi. You should check with Kanaya and see if she can make it.”

“Also, Tavros says you should baby-proof one of the lower levels. Your Dad’s pregnant.”

*


End file.
